There’s a lot below the surface in Y-3’s marriage of fashion and activewear. Simply put, in order for you to play hard and look great while doing so, these garments have a lot of work to do, and they are aided in that task by technology. There’s a constant play between the natural (be that the body or materials such as washed silk) and the synthetic. This is the second consecutive that the teams at Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas have surfaced that tension.
For spring, rust stains and quilting, plus larger volumes, put emphasis on tactility and filling space; in contrast, what wasn’t visible to the human eye was a focus for fall. Representing that theme was the lilac bird, depicted on a sweater, which, Adidas’s Stefano Pierre Beruschi said, “has the most infrared and ultraviolet on its feathers that exists in nature,” a fact revealed by special cameras (if only something comparable existed for distinguishing fact from fiction in AI.) In any case, there’s been an emphasis on quietness in fashion, a slight movement toward concealment versus exposure, and the Y-3 collection gave the wearer agency not only to adjust the fit of garments, but to hide the logo stripes, through flaps and snaps and zips. A step in the DIY topography of you wear the logo, the logo doesn’t wear you.
Complimenting this ability were unexpected visual tics that made you look twice, such as an asymmetric pocket that draped open to add a kind of Cubist touch to a sport skirt. There were also attached sleeves that could be worn over the arms or as a scarf. What looked like a tie-dye pattern was actually a repeatedly over-dyed nylon that was then flocked in a sort of reverse devoré process. At the request of Yohji Yamamoto himself, pleather was used in place of leather on one jacket, as if to stress its artificiality. Said Beruschi: It was about “taking something that feels natural and contorting it and twisting it in a way that feels a little bit more against the grain, through material, through stylistic gestures. We worked a lot into space on the body and controlling that space between the body and the garment.”
As spring’s focus on the what the team called “contra-natural” segued to that of the “hyper-natural,” the protective feeling of last season was translated into something airier (see the dress with the perforated-looking knits, or the body huggers with sheer insets) and visually warm. There was greater focus on draping and customization and the play between narrow and voluminous shapes, the result being that this was a collection with room to breathe.
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